


Take Me to the Pilot

by nightmareyes



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Eddie Kaspbrak, Adult Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Adult Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M, Morning After, Post-Pennywise (IT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 02:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21384550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightmareyes/pseuds/nightmareyes
Summary: “We shouldn’t – I mean, are you sure?” Richie pressed on, hating how unsteady that his voice sounded and hoping that Eddie couldn’t notice. “We shouldn’t do this.”“We don’t have to,” Eddie said slowly. Richie could feel Eddie’s warm breath against his skin. “But you never answered when I asked if I could stay with you tonight.”Richie thought that it was a wonder that they’d even made it up to his room.--Or: The night after beating Pennywise the Dancing Clown and scarcely making it out of the sewers with their lives, Richie and Eddie drunkenly and hastily hooked up. Now it’s the morning after, and they both have to decide if they’d made a lust-filled mistake – or if they actually do have feelings for each other.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 18
Kudos: 438
Collections: It Faves





	Take Me to the Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys!  
This fic is probably a little bit self-indulgent because I feel like in actuality it would probably take a lot more than just beating Pennywise for these two to finally hook up, buuuuuut... it's fun to pretend, right?  
The title of this came to me when I was listening to the Rocketman soundtrack. Take Me to the Pilot is the song that plays right after Elton John and John Reid hooked up for the first time, and in interviews IRL-Elton was talking about how much of a relief that moment was to him in real life -- that he'd finally, after years and years of anticipation, got to sleep with somebody that actually felt right to him. Honestly, that was kind of the inspiration for this entire fic. Anyway! That's more than enough rambling. I really hope you enjoy!

When Richie had woken up, the first thing on his mind was the overwhelming sensation of both pain and fatigue, as if he had lost a boxing match with a fucking kangaroo.

As he lay in bed, his limbs aching (as well as, like, his lungs and his stomach which was _really_ fucking weird), he figured that was what happened when you went face-to-face with a demon clown. It was a miracle that he hadn’t broken anything important, and that he had escaped with only cuts and bruises all over his body.

It still hadn’t quite sunken in yet – that they’d finally beaten _It. _Even when Richie couldn’t remember that It had existed, It had always haunted him, seeping into nearly all aspects of his life after Derry from pertinent to insignificant. Richie couldn’t help but find it deeply unsettling.

Though he had been relatively happy in those years, Richie had always found himself _wanting_. For what, he wasn’t entirely sure, but he had felt as though something fundamental had been missing in his life. He felt ashamed for wanting to look for it when, by any stretch of the imagination, his life was fantastic.

After a childhood of being made fun of for his appearance (not that he had remembered it) Richie had finally grown into his looks decently enough to have regular television appearances and even the occasional magazine cover shot. For God’s sake, he was a relatively well-known _celebrity_, and he had the kind of job that he could drop out of at just about any moment in time for an impromptu visit all across the fucking country.

_ (He had told his manager that he was returning home on _vacation. _How was he supposed to explain the reality of things when he’d returned to LA looking like he’d been mauled by a bear? “Oh hello, Richie, how was your trip?” “It was awesome, thanks for asking! My friends and I finally killed the Evil Ronald McDonald character that had been tormenting us for years on end. Oh, how’d we do it? By calling it mean names and pulling its heart right out of its sobbing body, of course! And how were things back here?”) _

The second thing that Richie had noticed that morning, as he glanced at the clock on his bedside table, was that it was just past noon. Nobody had woken him up.

He wasn’t sure if he was upset about that or not. Richie knew now that Pennywise was dead that his obligation to his friends was essentially through. He didn’t have to stay here anymore; if he’d woken up earlier he could have bought a plane ticket and been on his way back to California by now.

But Richie had felt something of a pull keeping him in Derry. He wasn’t sure if it was that he still had some sort of unfinished business, or the more likely alternative that he’d just genuinely missed his friends and a part of him hadn’t wanted to leave yet. They had only been together again for two days, and yet they had hit it off so well and gotten along as though they had never been apart. How was it that the friends that he’d had in middle school had felt so much more genuine than anybody that he’d had in his life since then? Richie wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

The third thing that Richie noticed upon waking was a bit different, and it had nearly given him a start when he realized it.

Lying right next to him in his bed, curled up lazily alongside of his back as though they had been cuddling in their sleep, was a very naked Eddie Kaspbrak.

And then it came back to him.

Not all of it, but enough.

He remembered whiskey, probably a bit too much, burning down his throat. In his mind, he saw Eddie drinking too, pressed up against him in the lobby of the townhouse. It was late; he had remembered thinking that everybody else had probably gone to sleep, except for (_“Bev and Ben are probably fucking right now,” he slurred.) _

Most potently, after being alone with Eddie for the first time since they had been home, Richie remembered _feelings_ hitting him like a rush of warm water or like a knife through the chest. They were feelings that Richie had managed to bury deep inside himself where he thought that he’d never find them again. But, as it turned out, they’d never gone away.

He remembered what had happened next. Eddie hadn’t wanted to go back to his own room—

(_“Could I stay with you?” he murmured, clinging onto Richie’s arm. “There’s still blood all over mine, and you already let me use your shower. It’s only reasonable that I use your room too.”_

_“That doesn’t make any goddamn sense, Eds,” Richie said, but he felt a pull in his stomach, feeling unable to muster the strength to turn Eddie away when he was asking._

_What _was _he asking?_

_“I don’t even have to sleep in your bed with you, if you don’t want me to. I could take the floor.” _

_“I’m not making you take the fucking floor, man,” Richie mumbled, keeping his eyes focused on Eddie._

_“Well, whatever. It doesn’t even fucking matter. I‘m just… so happy that we won today, Rich. So, so happy.” As Eddie smiled, the bandage on his cheek leftover from when Bowers had stabbed him in the face crinkled. He seemed nearly giddy, which seemed out of character in a way that Richie wasn’t at all used to seeing. “I’m happy that all of this happened, even the bad shit, ‘cause now I get to be with you again.”_

_Richie felt his heartbeat thrumming throughout his body. “Jesus, I wish you were this nice to me when you were sober.”_

_“I am sober, Rich. Mostly sober at least. But maybe drunk enough to do something stupid,” he said. Richie was starting to wonder if he was the “something stupid” before Eddie followed it up with, “I left Myra.”_

_“You left your wife?” Richie asked, unable to hide the surprise in his voice. They had been together for most of the past few days, and Eddie showed no indication that this had been happening. “When?”_

_“Before I left.” He shook his head, perhaps in disbelief. That, or maybe he was still trying to convince himself that it was true. “That’s why I packed so much shit with me when I came here. I just – I knew that I was never going back.”_

_Richie tried to laugh it off, but suddenly the air in the room felt heavier. “And all this time I thought you were just a pack rat.”_

_“It was like… when Mike called me, it was like all of the memories of us as kids that I’d forgotten about had just started to reappear. There were still some things that I couldn’t remember, but all of the important things were right at the front of my mind.”_

_Richie knew exactly how he’d felt. When his memories had first started to seep through, it wasn’t like a dam had broken and everything had rushed back; it was like the dam was filled with holes and the memories trickled through slowly. He didn’t remember many specific things that had happened, but he was overwhelmed by how deeply that he had _felt_ whatever it was that he had clearly forgotten. _

_The first thing that he’d felt immediately was terror and unease. Of Pennywise, of course, but also of bullies who’d given him black eyes or shoved him into lockers, or of people who had teased him and made him feel small or ugly or bad at every opportunity that they’d gotten. _It had made so much sense now_, Richie thought, _why he had always felt so insecure and inadequate.

_It hadn’t been until he’d gotten to the Jade of the Orient that the feelings of discomfort and sadness had been eclipsed by _love_. For his family, of course, but mostly of his friends who’d stood by him and loved him back unconditionally – who had given a gigantic fucking middle finger and a rock to the skull of everybody who’d tried to hurt them for being losers._

_But at the forefront of his mind, overwhelming all of the feelings of fear of the unknown and love for his friends was his memory of something else. _Someone else, _Richie had thought, as he watched Eddie list off his allergies to the waitress for the third time._

_He was all grown up now –they both were – and somehow nothing had changed. _

_Jesus, how fucking pathetic did you have to be to still be in love with your crush from _middle school_?_

_Almost too pathetic to bear, Richie had thought, so he just said, “Me too. Your mom was the first thing in my mind when I got the call.”_

_“Shut up, Richie, could you just take me seriously for a minute?” Eddie sounded exasperated. This was just how Richie liked Eddie: when he’d give it back to Richie good as he’d get it. Eddie leaned in closer to say, “When Mike called and all of the memories came back, the first thing I remembered was how I felt about you.”_

_Richie swallowed. “A pain in your ass?”_

_“Yeah,” Eddie said quietly, laughing to himself in disbelief. “Yeah, definitely that. But I also remembered how much that I’d always wanted to do this.”_

_Eddie leaned in closer. He’d pressed their foreheads together, noses touching but a nearly tangible gap between their lips._

_Richie’s breathing was shallow. He needed to pull away – he’d dreamed about this too many times for it to happen while they were both a bit too drunk and buzzing from the fact that they were somehow still alive. He’d given Eddie too much ownership over his heart to risk that Eddie would wake up in the morning and regret whatever they’d gotten up to._

_But that was the logical part of his brain—the part that had made sense. That part of him wasn’t millimeters away from kissing the boy that he’d been in love with for nearly thirty years._

_He couldn’t make himself move away. “Eds.”_

_“You know Rich, I think I actually do like it when you call me that,” Eddie whispered, keeping impossibly still. _

_“We shouldn’t – I mean, are you sure?” Richie pressed on, hating how unsteady that his voice sounded and hoping that Eddie couldn’t notice. “We shouldn’t do this.”_

_“We don’t have to,” Eddie said slowly. Richie could feel Eddie’s warm breath against his skin. “But you never answered when I asked if I could stay with you tonight.”)_

Richie thought that it was a wonder that they’d even made it up to his room.

He stared at Eddie, unsure of what he should do. Waking him felt wrong, but leaving him there alone felt _worse_.

Sleeping with Eddie had been a mistake – a fucking incredible, unbelievable mistake that would have sent Richie’s thirteen-year-old self reeling—but it had been a mistake nonetheless.

Eddie had just been excited and overcome with emotion. They both had been; for christ’s sake, they’d somehow outsmarted and murdered a monster that had been alive for _billions of years_, and they’d lived to tell the tale! They were still coming to terms with the fact that they’d had an entire childhood that they had completely _forgotten_ for most of their lives! Not to mention, Eddie had just left his wife and was probably feeling extra lonely.

He had no doubt that to Eddie, this was just meaningless sex.

Richie felt his stomach turn at the thought. Meaningless sex with Eddie may have very well been worse than not having sex with him at all.

Because if it were meaningless sex, that had meant that everything that they’d done last night, everything that he’d learned – what Eddie had liked, how he sounded, what it’d felt like to have Eddie underneath him – it was all wasted knowledge. He would have it in his mind to haunt him for the rest of his life as a ghost of what he could never have.

At that moment, Eddie started to stir from beside him, and Richie suddenly regretted not being an asshole and running away when he had the chance.

Eddie squirmed for a few moments before slowly opening his eyes and looking up at Richie.

“Rich,” he murmured sleepily. His hair was a stringy mess, but his features were soft and his eyes still full of sleep. Richie felt something flutter in his chest at just how domestic that laying there together had felt. Unlike Richie, Eddie hadn’t seemed surprised at all to wake up in bed with somebody else.

“Hey, Eds.” Richie said softly.

Eddie broke into a goofy grin as he looked around the room in slight disbelief. “Why does it feel like after everything that we went through yesterday, that us being here together is the weirdest part?”

Richie essentially had to tear his eyes away from Eddie, not wanting to unintentionally let the fondness that he was feeling show. “I don’t know, maybe because you’re so used to seeing me as the hunk who’s fucking your mother?”

“You’re just bitter because you can’t call me a virgin as an insult anymore.”

Richie laughed, but he’d paused for a minute before saying anything in response. He knew what would happen next: they’d slip into teasing each other and flinging fake insults in a way that had felt so comfortable that Richie would have thought that they had been doing it for their entire lives.

Then, Eddie would get up and _leave_. He would leave, and the two of them would go their separate ways, and they would never have to speak about it again.

The pathetic part of Richie – the sappy, love-struck part that had gotten him into this mess in the first place, wanted to beg Eddie to stay.

The spiteful part of him, however, wanted to beat Eddie to the punch. “Listen, Eds, about that. I think that it might be best if we just pretend that this whole thing with us had never happened.”

“Wait, what?” Eddie asked, his smile vanishing and being replaced with a look of utter confusion. “Why?”

Richie shifted uncomfortably. “Because it was just, like, a meaningless thing… right?”

“You thought it was meaningless?” Eddie asked slowly.

Richie had never been a good liar; that’s why he’d had his voices. They had helped him avoid the problem, because if people didn’t take you seriously, then they couldn’t ever tell if what you were saying were true.

Instead of lying, Richie sidestepped. “Didn’t you?”

“I mean… _no_,” Eddie frowned, the lines on his forehead wrinkling. “Of course not. I thought I told you that last night.”

“I know that everything that happened was a lot,” Richie said, trying to remain objective and logical. “Or, well, that’s probably gravely understating it because it’s a miracle that we didn’t die. I mean, if I hadn’t seen in the deadlights what Pennywise was going to do to you –“

Eddie interrupted him sharply. “You saved my life.”

Richie scoffed, well aware that he was starting to babble. “I mean, I violently pushed you about a foot away from a serial killer clown so that you didn’t get turned into a human kebab. I don’t think that Robert Downey Jr. is, like, quaking in his Gucci boots worrying that I’m going to steal his next superhero movie gig.”

“Well, no. You’re not nearly as hot as Robert Downey Jr.,” Eddie said, frowning. “But you did save my life.”

“And you saved mine too! If you hadn’t gotten me out of there I’d probably still be fucking floating down there in the sewers or some shit,” Richie laughed incredulously, still somewhat in shock at the odds that they’d beaten by making it out alive. “That’s my point.”

“That we both saved each other?”

“No, that – that we were both just relieved to be alive, because by all logic we probably both should have died horrible deaths, just like Bev said.” He paused for a beat before adding, “and when you’re relieved to be alive, you do things that you’ll regret in the morning.”

Eddie was starting to look slightly pale. “Did you regret this?”

Avoid, avoid, _avoid_. Richie didn’t know how much longer he could manage to spend convincing Eddie to leave. “I don’t know what to tell you, Eddie Bear. I’m giving you a clean break.”

“Jesus fuck,” Eddie gasped. _“Don’t_ call me that _ever_, and especially not when I’m in bed with you, jackass.”

“Sonia was always the best at pet names. I could try as hard as I could with _Eds_ or _Spaghetti _or whatever else, but she had the cutest one right there all along.”

“If you don’t stop talking about my mother while we are literally naked, I’m gonna give your _neck_ a clean break.”

Richie tried to laugh, but the sound died in his throat. He wasn’t sure what to say – everything that he had been trying to do so far had seemed to be backfiring at him. What could he expect when he was trying to send Eddie away when he had so badly wanted him to stay?

But Richie wasn’t stupid. He knew that he couldn’t have this. He had been trying for his entire life to replicate how he’d felt with Eddie – who he didn’t even _remember_ but who had stuck with him nevertheless like the blood in his veins. Fate had stolen _this_ from him what had felt like a lifetime ago, and no part of Richie ever suspected that he would get it back.

“Really, Eds,” He finally whispered. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Richie, what part of what I said to you last night aren’t you getting?” Eddie asked exasperatedly. “I _want_ to stay with you. I want a hell of a lot more than that.”

Richie shook his head like he still couldn’t believe anything that Eddie was saying. “Eds, you haven’t even served your wife divorce papers yet. How do you know that this isn’t just a rebound, or nostalgia, or – or just jumping on the closest dick you could find?”

Eddie had barely let Richie finish speaking before he fired back with, “Because when I saw you at the Jade, before you even opened your dumb, fucking mouth, I realized that I felt more for you in just that one _moment_ than I’d ever felt about Myra in our entire marriage.”

Richie only stared back at him.

“So this isn’t _nostalgia_ or whatever the fuck you just said,” Eddie continued, realizing that he wasn’t going to get a response. “And if I wanted to jump on the closest dick I could find I wouldn’t have come all the way to fucking Maine, dumbass. I want _you_.”

Richie’s mouth suddenly felt terribly dry. “Your pillow talk could use some work.”

“Well then give me the chance to work on it,” Eddie urged. When Richie didn’t answer right away, he quickly amended, “Unless, I mean. Unless it was a mistake for you, and that’s why you’re trying to send me away. I mean I know you don’t write your own shit, but in your comedy acts you always talk about all the chicks you fuck, and maybe I’m the one who’s being an idiot and– “

“Eds, I’m gay.” Richie said suddenly. He took a few uneven breaths, only now realizing how nervous that he’d felt. “I’ve never… said that. Like, out loud. To anyone who was listening.”

“Well thanks for telling me, then,” Eddie said after a moment. “I feel kind of honored.”

“I mean, I feel like you probably could have surmised that from our current situation, but yeah,” Richie said sardonically. “Turns out that all of the assholes who pushed me around and wrote _fag_ on my locker in high school were right.”

“I’ve never given much thought to it.” Eddie said. At first, Richie wasn’t entirely sure what Eddie was referring to. He realized all at once that Eddie had been talking about his own sexuality. “I think I would have, if I hadn’t forgotten all of you, but everybody was gone – and _you_ were gone, especially – and the only person that I had was my Ma. How sad is that?”

Richie nodded, knowing all too well how terrible that it’d felt to forget about all of his friends. “It was like you could feel that something was missing.”

“Yeah, exactly like that. But I had no clue what it was,” Eddie continued, smiling sadly. “All I knew was what my Ma had told me – that I was sick and broken and fragile, and when she finally was on death’s door… I guess I just didn’t think that I could deal with being all of those things all by myself.”

Richie slowly reached over to Eddie and laced their fingers together, feeling more filled with regret than he had since he’d been back home. “God, Eds, you were never any of those things.”

“I know,” Eddie said hesitantly. “I mean, I think I know now, at least. But that was why I married Myra. Fuck, I should show you a picture, she even looks like my mother. Realizing it now I could almost be sick over it, but having someone like her with me somehow felt better than having nobody at all.”

Richie could relate, painfully so, to the feeling of not having anybody. He had his fans, of course, but fame was empty. What he wanted was to have somebody waiting for him when he’d come home from work – who’d tell him that his jokes were fucking stupid and hold his hand and fall asleep in his arms.

Suddenly, a thought had occurred him.

Richie had felt so,_ so_ alone for his entire adult life. And if Eddie was all the way across the fucking country in New York feeling just as alone, then what was the point?

There wasn’t any.

“Come to LA with me,” Richie said at once.

“What?”

“I mean it,” Richie said, his pulse racing. “I’m done being a cryptic and moody bitch. I don’t want you to go back to New York. I want you to come with me.”

“Rich, I can’t just uproot my life,” Eddie laughed. “I mean, my job is there and my –“

“Your what?” Richie cut him off quickly before Eddie could think too hard about it. “Your house? Your wife? Go on, please, I’m listening.”

“I have no idea what the housing market is like in LA.” Eddie protested.

“Live with me,” Richie said. “We don’t even have to be– I mean, if you don’t want, we can just be friends. I have five spare rooms. For fuck’s sake, nobody needs that many when they live by themselves. And you’re still my best friend, Eds, nothing would have to change if you didn’t want it to.”

“This is ridiculous,” Eddie said, but now he was smiling.

“It’s not,” Richie insisted. “What _is_ ridiculous is how nice my house is. I’m not just saying this for chucks, Eds. I’ve got an office where you can work from home if you want to, and big in-ground pool which I keep _extremely clean_ at all times! You’d love it there.”

“Richie, if I say yes,” Eddie said slowly, “I don’t want to move in as your friend. We _are_ friends, I know we always have been, but I think we might be more than that, right? I mean… aren’t we? I don’t think I can do this if what I’m feeling is one-sided.”

Before he could lose his nerve, Richie said, “Eddie, I’ve been in love with you since we were fucking tweens.”

It was a confession that had haunted him for decades, but as it passed his lips, he felt relieved instead of burdened.

Eddie’s eyes widened, and Richie rushed, “Yeah, I know what I said, and I know you’re supposed to say that kind of thing at a candle-lit dinner with rose petals and champagne and after I’ve drawn you like one of my French girls or some shit. And I know you’re definitely not supposed to say it in bed after drunkenly hooking up for the first time after thirty years of pining, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I loved you then, and even throughout all of those years when I couldn’t remember you, I still loved you.”

“I—“

“And you don’t have to say it back!” Richie added hastily. “I know that you literally just said that you’d never really thought about it.”

“Richie –“

“And I guess it was kind of a dick move to drop that on you when you don’t have much of an escape route, huh?” Richie said nervously. “It’s not really –“

“Hey, dumbass!” Eddie interjected, not giving Richie a chance to interrupt him again. “I love you too.”

Richie blinked. “You do?”

“You probably could have surmised that from our current situation,” Eddie said, throwing Richie’s earlier comment back at him in a playfully mocking tone. “But I do. I think that maybe I always have.”

Richie felt his heartbeat throbbing in his eardrums. “Oh. Well that – I mean. _Oh._”

“At long last I’ve shut you up,” Eddie said, grinning. “I think I love you even more now.”

“Fuck,” Richie muttered, “you’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep saying that.”

“Good. Then I’ll finally have some peace.”

Richie let out a breathy laugh. Before he could formulate a proper response, they were both reaching for each other.

The kiss was different than last night –

_(“Eds. Eddie, fuck,” Richie panted against Eddie’s lips as he pressed Eddie into the comforter._

_“You want to do this, right?” Eddie asked anxiously._

_“Fuck yes,” Richie said, trying to stifle a moan as Eddie nipped at a pressure point on his neck. There would be a bruise there tomorrow, he’d thought. “You want this too, right? Like, this is okay?”_

_“Way fucking more than okay.”_

_They kissed desperately, like instead of oxygen, they’d needed each other to breathe. They kissed as though they were living on borrowed time – _they weren’t, not anymore at least, _Richie had thought, but it hadn’t made them any less frantic._

_Richie had kissed him like he’d never be able to again, because he figured that he never would.)_

This time, it wasn’t the kind of hungry, dirty kiss that had preceded sex; it felt like the kind of kiss given to a lover – slow, deep, and breathtaking. Their desperate, frantic movements of the night before had gone; unlike last night’s kisses, today Richie kissed Eddie as though he would be planning on kissing him for the rest of his life.

They parted after a moment when they’d heard a movement from downstairs.

“Everyone else must be awake,” Eddie murmured.

Richie smirked. “I wonder if Ben and Beverly thought that they were the only ones who’d gotten some last night.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Now _Ben_, that’s who I would have really liked to hook up with. He filled out pretty fucking nicely.”

“Who’d you think that I was picturing all of last night?” Richie joked. They’d lain in silence for a few more moments before he quietly asked, “So what now?”

“Well,” Eddie said slowly, starting to smile. “I guess I’m booking a flight to LA.”

***

They stumbled their way downstairs after about another hour. They’d needed time to get re-acquainted with each other in the light of day, now that things hadn’t been so urgent.

_ (The sunlight cracked through the shutters on the window and striped across Eddie’s chest._

_“You look great, by the way,” Richie had said. “I’m not sure if I told you that at all last night, but you make a really hot grown-up.”_

_“I think you told me once or twice… or maybe a thousand times. I liked it, though,” Eddie amended. “I’m just honored that Sexy, Up-and-Coming Comedian Richie Tozier thinks that I’m attractive.”_

_It had taken Richie a moment to realize why that specific combination of words had sounded so familiar. “Fuck, you’re not talking about that article in _People_, are you?”_

_“Oh yeah,” Eddie laughed. “Reclaiming the Dad Bod. The one you posed for with those tiny swim trunks on the beach?”_

_“You saw that?” Richie asked, feeling his cheeks heat up and cursing his manager for ever talking him into doing that shoot._

_ “I did. That magazine honestly fucked with my head. I had no idea why I was so drawn to that picture of you.” Eddie paused before saying, “I actually, uh, bought it.”_

_“Really? Why?”_

_“I don’t know I just – I really liked it, is all,” Eddie said a little too quickly. “I thought that maybe I was having a sexuality crisis or something, which obviously in hindsight I guess I was. But now I know I really liked it so much because it was you.”_

_“Wait,” Richie said, feeling the wheels turn in his brain. “How much did you like it?”_

_This time, Eddie was the one turning red. “Shut up.”_

_“Eds don’t tell me –“_

_“I said shut the fuck up.”_

_“You did _not_ jerk off to that shitty fucking picture of me.”_

_“Okay, first of all, I said shut up. You’re an asshole. Second of all, I had a lot of pent up… frustration, and obviously Myra and I weren’t having sex, so I had to get it from somewhere. And third?” Eddie lowered his voice an octave. “It was a really fucking hot picture of you.”_

_Richie felt something hot settle in his stomach as he pulled Eddie in for a kiss. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so flattered in my life.”_

_“Don’t get used to it,” Eddie mumbled against Richie’s lips._

_And then, “Did you want to see how much I liked it?”)_

Afterwards, Eddie had done what he’d said he was going to and booked a ticket back to LA for five days later. One day, he’d said, would be to account for packing the rest of his things and moving his entire life across the country.

The other days would be to spend time with their friends – the people that they’d loved and whose loss had felt almost as entirely as significant as it had felt to lose each other.

Richie couldn’t wait for those five days to pass – couldn’t stop imagining Eddie in his home, in his _bed_, and getting to show Eddie all his favorite places around LA. When he did, he would be sure to tell Eddie about all the experiences that he’d had in another life.

One that couldn’t ever quite compare to this one.

Until then, Richie was happy with where he was. As far as he was concerned, now that Pennywise was gone, he had gained back all of the things that he had been so desperately missing from his life.

There was no rush anymore.

After all, Richie had figured that now they had just about all of the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!!! I really hope you liked it -- but regardless of whether you did or not, if you have the time I'd love to hear what you thought! :)  
(also subtle plug, if you're at all interested, you can follow my IT blog, eddiesbootyshorts! I've got a lot of WIPs that are coming up soon so that's where I'll post them when they come out.)


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